Central Asia

 

 

 

Having, in several trips, followed the Silk Road from Xian and Urumqi in China across Tajikistan and Uzbekistan our next visit had to be to the Caucuses.  So in May 2019 we purchased an organised tour to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia from ExPat Explore.  If this is all that interests you you might want to skip straight to Azerbaijan. Click here...

 

Geology and pre-history

In geological terms the Caucasus Mountains are very new, resulting of the collision of the Eurasian and Arabian plates that began around 200 million years ago and remains ongoing, generating regular earthquakes and occasional eruptions. The mountains and valleys were glaciated less than 20,000 years ago and are geologically unstable, with high rates of active erosion.  So the rivers run grey with silt and pebbles.

 

Georgian landforms

 

There are two roughly parallel ranges, like a diagonal slash, with the north-western end on the Black Sea and south-eastern end on the Caspian Sea near Baku.  Since prehistoric times they have created a difficult to cross physical barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. 

In an early anthropological theory, based on linguistics, it was argued that the Caucuses Mountains must be the origin of the 'Caucasian Race'.  Today 'Caucasian' is not considered to be an actual race but a broad medical classification, meaning a white person.  Nevertheless modern genetics seems to confirm that white skin is a relatively recent genetic adaptation, enhancing vitamin D production, allowing humans to first inhabit inland areas of northern Europe and Asia, about 12,000 years ago.  So all of us with white skin might feel some affinity to these lands.

Until the ice melted a little over ten thousand years ago at the end of the last glaciation, the upland areas were effectively uninhabitable by modern humans. The more mountainous areas still experience heavy snow in winter, limiting agriculture to grazing.

Yet the convoluted twists of these mountains created many separate habitable valleys so, in relative isolation, the early inhabitants developed into many separate communities. Today these groups have coalesced, or have been coerced, into a handful of modern countries, each with several ethnic identities.

As fanatical sporting loyalties demonstrate, the human animal is genetically driven, by survival evolution, to join like-minded groups. Over time these mutually supportive groups develop a common language; and with language comes common beliefs and common cultural traditions.

History shows that these divergent groups don't need much encouragement to make war on each other to: capture sustaining resources; to avenge past insults and injuries; or to honour alliances against a perceived common threat.  This is rarely more evident than in the Caucuses.

 

 

The Silk Road

 

Human activities in these mountains might have remained very basic: housed in primitive stone structures; clothed in hides; using stone tools; weaving; and tending herds; were it not for a wealth of mineral resources, including deposits of copper, that became essential to the manufacture of humanity's first industrial; engineering; and weapon making metal: bronze. 

This is among the oldest bronze making regions in the world. Thus, over three millennia before the Common Era (> 3,500 BC), metallurgy and industrial science blossomed here and made the region attractive to a succession of imperial conquerors. 

Later its geographical position, astride one of ancient humanity's most important trade routes added to its strategic importance.  This ancient trade route came to be known to modern historians as the Silk Road, because it connected the Mediterranean and later European civilisations to the silks of China. Trade is of course a two way arrangement. In return China probably acquired bronze technology. 

As my earlier travelogue: 'In the footsteps of Marco Polo' describes there was no actual 'silk road' but a series of cities; towns; and caravanserai, that traders and merchants travelled between, like a 'bucket brigade' using stepping stones across a stream. 

Very seldom did anyone, as did Marco Polo, traverse the entire distance from Beijing or Xi'an to the Mediterranean.  And just like using randomly convenient stepping stones, there were a number of different routes: depending on the prevailing difficulty and/or the experience of the traders.  Preference might also be given to places that added value to the trade with local craftsmanship: weaving, potting or smelting metals.  Among these stops along the way were the centres that are now: Ürümqi in China; Khujand in Tajikistan; and Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva in Uzbekistan. 

Each of these has a chapter in: In the footsteps of Marco Polo. Read more...

Although most silk trade went around, after leaving Khiva or Bukhara, a trader could also travel to one of several small ports on the Caspian Sea and catch a boat.  The remains of ancient trade goods and settlements, long ago lost to climate change, have been found around Aktau on the eastern shore.

Another important silk road stepping stone, until it was destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century, was the ancient city of Konjikala. It afforded a sometimes safer route to the south of the Caspian that avoided the unpredictable, slave trading, city of Khiva.  Konjikala was later restored, under the Russian Empire, as Ashgabat, to become the capital of Turkmenistan. 

In 1948, eighteen years before the Tashkent earthquake, Ashgabat suffered a similar earthquake and too was rebuilt as a modern Soviet capital. I haven't been to Turkmenistan but Ashgabat's on-line panorama looks familiar - quite like Tashkent. See here... 

The port city of Baku was an almost inevitable next stop, after which the ancient trade route continued overland, across the Caucasus, traversing the Darial Gorge, and/or other passes in Georgia, to the Roman constructed deep water port of Batumi, on the Black Sea.  From there traders could travel directly by ship to Byzantium (Constantinople/Istanbul) then on to Venice; Athens; Rome or perhaps, even, up the Nile. 

 

Stepping stones on the Silk Road
Khiva was not always friendly to passing caravans Read more...

 

The Caucasian route gained added importance in the 6th century as a result of the confrontation between the Byzantine and Persian Empires - when it became difficult and unprofitable to carry silk to Byzantium and the Mediterranean via Persia. An ancient record confirms that least one caravan loaded with silk used this route in 568 CE, after which it appears to have become the preferred route for at least a century.  Archaeological excavations in the North Caucasus confirm that in the late 6th century and the first half of the 7th century the greater part of Chinese silk was delivered to Byzantium through the Caucasus. But this changed after the Arab invasion when a less arduous route, via Persia, again became competitive.

 

The Countries of the Caucuses

 

As a result of its mineral wealth and strategic position, this is one of the most fought over regions on earth.

The Caucuses were first conquered and 'civilised' by Cyrus the Great of the First Persian Empire, around 500 BCE, and then briefly by the Greeks, under Alexander, followed by the Romans and Byzantines alternating with the Persians again.

With the rise of Islam after 632 CE the Arabs began their conquest of Persia and Egypt, reaching the Caucuses in the eighth century.

They were followed by the Mongols - Genghis Khan - in the 13th century.

The Khanates (kingdoms) Genghis Khan and his son established generally adopted the prevailing religion of the conquered lands. Several Khanates in this region fell to the growing Russian Empire (Christian).

In the late 14th century a new conqueror arrived, Timur (Tamerlane) 'The Sword of Islam' to overthrow both the ruling Urus Khan and his nephew Tokhtamysh and to defeat the Russians. Tamerlane also assisted in the defeat of the early (Islamic) Ottomans, briefly saving Constantinople for the (Christian) Byzantines. 

But that reprieve was short lived. In 1453 after a long siege the Ottomans took the City, renaming it Istanbul, and went on to build their own great Ottoman Empire, which then lasted over four hundred years, until the end of the Great War (WW1 1914-18). 

The modern borders in the area today were largely the outcome of the events surrounding the Great War and its aftermath.  In particular the October (Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the Treaty of Versailles (Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany) at the war's end and the related Treaty of Sèvres (that initiated the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and its dismemberment).

Yet the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has wrought, perhaps, the most profound changes of all.

Bordered by Iran (Persia) and Turkey to the south and Russia to the north, present day Georgia and Armenia are located within wide mountain valleys of the south Caucasus, while modern Azerbaijan extends down from the mountains to the planes around the eastern Caspian. Georgia and Armenia are predominantly Christian while Azerbaijan is predominantly Muslim. Each have their own language and the Christian Churches also differ. Until 1991 the lingua franca (allowing them to communicate across communities) was Russian but the younger generation use English.

Over the peaks, on the northern slopes of the mountains, in Russia, despite being within a single Federation, things are little less disunited. There are seven semi-autonomous Caucasian Republics in Russia. From west to east these are the Republics of: Adygea; Karachay–Cherkessia; Kabardino-Balkaria; North Ossetia–Alania; Ingushetia; Chechnya*; and Dagestan. 

Each has their own language, traditions and religious practices. The first three are Muslim by a small majority, the balance being non-believers; Christians; and some others. In contrast North Ossetia–Alania is predominantly Christian (various flavours) and Uatsdin (a neo-pagan religion of the Ossetian ethnic group) and only a small minority are Muslim. Non-believers, usually a big group in the former Soviets, are also relatively scarce.  Ingushetia, adjoining, could scarcely be more different. The poorest and least developed region in the Northern Caucuses, the Ingush people are predominantly Sunni Muslim.  They are ethnically and culturally similar, but separate from, the bordering Chechen people. 

Like neighbouring Azerbaijan, the Russian Republic of Dagestan has access to oil and gas deposits under the Caspian. Economically more successful and more secular than its unruly neighbour, Chechnya, Dagestan responded to the Chechen 'troubles*' by hardening its borders against insurgents. Like Azerbaijan the majority of people are nominally Muslim yet, as in Azerbaijan, agriculture includes grape growing and wine making, in addition to traditional grazing and so on. As elsewhere in the Caucuses, countries and regions in the mountainous areas are rich in minerals and often have upland lakes and rivers providing hydroelectric power.

   

*Chechnya

Those of us who listen to the news have all heard of Chechnya. Today it's strategically important to Russia because of its oil fields.  These were a target for Germany in two World Wars and have been disrupted by social unrest. Yet Chechnya has been a problem for Russia since Tsarist times, when Chechen Highlanders repelled Imperial forces. This initiated a series of 'ethnic cleansings' that dispersed Chechens across the world and hardened the resolve of separatists, who with the collapse of the Soviet Union, became a magnate for global power-politics. 

The usual cold-war culprits facilitated the supply of modern weapons, ammunition and explosives to the revolutionaries to 'assist in their struggle' and in 1999 a full scale war began in Chechnya, spilling over into both Ingushetia and Dagestan, involving Sunni Muslim separatists and their foreign mujahedeen (those who engage in Jihad) and Arab supporters (read Saudi-Arabia again) that also carried the Chechen independence struggle to Moscow and other parts of Russia, via a series of well-planned terror attacks. These cost the lives of many hundreds of innocent people, including over 300 schoolchildren in a single attack, and the bringing down of a passenger aircraft. The terrorism seems to have been unsuccessful. In 2009 the Russian government announced that it had restored order and since that time the terrorism has indeed subsided.

 

Azerbaijan

 

Baku
 

From Doha we flew into Baku the largest city and capital of Azerbaijan, located on the Caspian Sea. 

We arrived a couple of days before joining our tour and stayed in the historic and comfortable Shah Palace Hotel, in the Old City, that has Soviet style suite sizes (big) and features glass panels in the atrium floor over ancient wells and archaeological artefacts, in addition to an excellent breakfast, complete with omelette station.  We can recommend this hotel.

Our only reservation was the industrial-style shower plumbing and the very deep and high bath.  The former was difficult to adjust and the latter required a Russian pole vaulter's athletic skill to get in and out of.  Hundreds of channels were available on the two TV's via half a dozen satellites. But only a couple were in English, including the BBC World News, obliging us to keep well abreast of BREXIT and May's May resignation. Some were familiar programs incomprehensibly dubbed into Russian or other local languages, including the Australian program 'My Kitchen Rules'.

 

Shah Palace Hotel Atrium, Baku
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

The old city retains its defensive walls that were under ongoing repair as they must have been since the 13th century when according to an inscription on a stone from the wall they were built by the order of Shirvan Shah Abdul Hidja Manutchehr of the Kesranid line. This makes these walls contemporary with the Tower of London and associated walls.  Like London Baku is ancient. It was an important port on the Caspian Sea during the silk trade with China. The silk trade goes back at least as far as the Bronze Age. Chinese silk, that may have passed this way, has even been found in Neolithic sarcophagi in Egypt. 

 

The Maiden Tower- surrounds and a view from the top - and a section of the old Baku wall - with cannon

 

Beyond the Old City Baku is one of the most modern looking cities in the world, and a bonanza for British architects.

 

A bonanza for British architects
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

On the way in from the airport our cab driver made a point of pointing out the Baku Crystal Hall that was built expressly for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. As we are not followers of that event, his enthusiasm fell on pop-deaf ears, as was his revelation that the football stadium was hosting a soccer match between two London teams: Chelsea and Arsenal, that coming weekend.  As it's a bit of a schlep from Charing Cross there were but a few extremely diehard fans in town. As expected Chelsea won.

The Eurovision Song Contest was the cause of an international incident.  Almost all Azerbaijanis are Shia Muslims, as in Iran.  As a result the Iranian ayatollahs feel some responsibility for their immortal souls.  Thus the Song Contest is anathema: a prime example of the Devil's influence promoting: immoral exposure of female pulchritude; abhorrent social concepts; and sexual deviation.  Bombing threats were made against the hated event; and on several hotels hosting contestants; and against the Crystal Hall; that had recently endured its own domestic controversy due to slum clearance to make way for its construction. 

Azerbaijan responded to Iranian threats by increasing security to unprecedented levels.

Indeed, one of the first things we noticed on landing in this Muslim country was that outwardly no one looked Muslim.  There was not a scarf or big beard in sight, let alone hijab or burka. On the contrary, many women seemed to be dressed rather revealingly in the height of European fashion or like young people anywhere. Investigating this on-line it seems, that as a result of the Soviet period and secular education, most Azerbaijanis are but 'cultural Muslims': for birth deaths and marriages but they seldom pray or adhere to the seven pillars. Mosques are largely empty. This was later confirmed by our first guide on our tour, who, when asked which way was Mecca was unable to say and seemed quite cross.

According to our tour itinerary:

'Baku is a combination of Paris and Dubai, a place that offers both history and contemporary culture, and an intriguing blend of east meets west.  The Old (or Inner) City of Baku, lcheri Sheher, is surrounded by a fortified wall and pleasant pedestrian boulevards. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and includes the Maiden Tower and Fountains Square, an area famous for its dozens of fountains and numerous shopping outlets.'

At different times we pretty well circumnavigated the walls of the old city and traversed the inner streets, initially because we, misled by signs about town, erroneously thought a metro station existed within the walls when the nearest station is, in reality, without. 

 

The Soviet-era Baku Metro
Like St Petersburg some stations are very deep -
as with other Soviet metros, like Moscow and Tashkent, it's wide gauge (2m) with an electrified third rail
To be fair, this is an older carriage - they also have some more modern rolling-stock - similar to China and Hong Kong

 

Staying in the Old City we were able to explore: the nearby Caspian waterfront with its iconic Carpet Museum - built to resemble a rolled carpet; little Venice complete with canals; and the almost completed 'Caspian Waterfront', an entertainment and leisure centre with sails said to be inspired by the Sydney Opera House.  Unlike the Black Sea that has numerous beaches and holiday locations the Caspian has flats where the water has receded and is not a great place to swim.  Like the almost gone Aral Sea, discussed in my notes on Uzbekistan on this website, the Caspian is a terminal lake.  Rivers flow in, principally the Volga, but there is no substantial outlet.  As a result the sea level is notoriously variable, by up to three metres.  The water is presently receding due to higher agricultural water diversions up-stream and evaporation due to warming. As a result it's becoming increasingly polluted, resulting in species extinction - and the oil wells don't help. We were advised not to drink the tap water.

Thanks to the soviet-style metro - reminiscent of St Petersburg - we were also able to visit other parts of the city including the Heydar Aliyev Center, passing by the huge Baku Congress Centre on the way. Like other architectural marvels in Baku the Heydar Aliyev Center is spectacular. It functions as an art gallery and surprisingly, in a country where most people are nominally Muslim, was presently hosting an exhibition of dolls and another of sculptures. In both exhibitions there were several pieces that were decidedly non-Muslim.  No wonder the Iranian ayatollahs have their knickers in a knot!

 

The Heydar Aliyev Center - note the tour bus for scale - and a local woman's fashion
Art doll exhibition and Heydar Aliyev's presidential cars 
Human Body sculpture exhibition - extraordinary in a Muslim majority country - some works were more explicit
A display of scale models of iconic buildings attributed to Heydar Aliyev and the Center grounds
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

Heydar Aliyev is said to be the father of modern Azerbaijan and his name is seen everywhere.  Like leaders in other ex-Soviet states, like Uzbekistan, he was already a political figure and strongman when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and 'stepped up to the plate' as the new President. Nominally a democracy like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkey, with a US style constitution, the President appoints his cabinet from non-elected 'friends' and even appoints judges to the Supreme Court. Thus he is effectively the supreme ruler and is able to suppress political opposition.  The second and current President, Ilham Aliyev, took over in 2003 and was re-elected yet again in 2018 with 86% of the vote. His ruling political party, the Yeni (new) Azerbaijan Party, also holds almost all the seats in the 'democratically elected' Parliament.

As elsewhere under this model (for example, in the Stans) nepotism is alive and well.  As might be guessed from his name, Ilham Aliyev is the son of Heydar Aliyev. 

To start our tour we first moved to another hotel in the suburbs.  This gave us an entirely different and more modern, utilitarian view of the City. We had the first day to ourselves as others arrived and chose to get a cab back to the city centre, to a not yet visited retail and entertainment street recommended in our guidebook.  After wandering around we settled in a very beautiful café-restaurant before walking back to the hotel. This long walk was another eye opener as the shortest route was along lanes passing through some poor and light industrial parts. Here children played in the unkempt streets; some women had covered their heads; and in stark contrast, a busty blond, walking towards us in high heels, with gyrating hips, was dressed for the Reeperbahn.   

The tour began the next day and bizarrely we found ourselves outside our previous hotel while our local guide pointed it out as a place of interest.  Moving on the guided tour became more interesting as we were guided, with numerous explanations, to the Maiden Tower (Giz Galasi), which we'd previously walked around but had not yet climbed. 

The Maiden Tower now serves as a lookout and a museum but at one time it may have been defensive.  This is controversial as it has no gun or arrow ports.  This results in disputes among historians and is discussed at length within.  To the casual observer it seems obvious that it would be an excellent lookout for ships approaching across the Caspian Sea and one or more cannon mounted on the roof would have the advantage of a 15 to17th century ship attempting to shell the city, while the remaining city walls, that presumably once encompassed it, do have multiple defensive arrow/gun ports.  Such are the musings of a tourist with time to wander about as a group of thirty, with varying degrees of fitness, scrambles up and down 150+ ancient steps rising to 30m above the ground level.

Then it was off to one of several historic Caravanserai that turned out to be a shopping arcade.

 

Two views from the top of the Maiden Tower - no 360 degree from me - go and see for yourself

 

The Palace of the Shirvanshahs was next. Again we'd been there already but knowing it was on the tour didn't buy tickets.

Unfortunately at this point one of our group, like James James Morrison's mother, seemed to have been mislaid.  Unlike James' mother she was found sheltering with, or perhaps from, the local police and needed to be retrieved, at which point our local guide's commentary dried up. 

In lieu, Wikipedia came to our aid: 

'The complex contains the main building of the palace, Divanhane, the burial-vaults, the shah's mosque with a minaret, Seyid Yahya Bakuvi's mausoleum (the so-called "mausoleum of the dervish"), south of the palace, a portal in the east, Murad's gate, a reservoir and the remnants of a bath house,' it told us.  Although architecturally harmonious these elements were built at different times. The tomb is marked with a construction date of 839 (Hijri = 1436) and the minaret of the Shah's mosque with 845 (1441).

In 1723, Baku was besieged by the troops of Peter I (Peter the Great of Russia), and the city was shelled, damaging the palace, but during the Soviet era it was partially restored, as a Museum of Religion. A final restoration in the 1990's led to the UNESCO World Heritage listing, along with the Maiden Tower.  The museum contained a small collection of ancient objects including a bowel of forty keys - each key a prayer to cure one of forty ailments. I suggested it to a nurse in our party as an alternative to all those modern medicines she now relies on.  After all, the ancients were so much wiser than we that we still set great store by their myths and imaginative scribblings, some examples of which also reside in the museum.

 

The minaret at the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and 40 keys (prayers) to cure 40 ailments
(note that the dates shown on the plaques are from the earliest foundations and do not accord with those inscribed on the present buildings)
 

The entrance ramp to the Palace affords a good view of the Flame Towers - a group of three modern buildings designed by a British architect, with which modern Baku has become identified.  These are clad in thousands of light bars above each window that change colour at night so that the towers resemble flames in a campfire.  The brief was to celebrate Baku as the 'land of fire' that can be naturally spontaneous in this oil rich region where natural gas leaks to the surface.   Our tour included a trip to a lookout for a daytime panorama and a night time trip to photograph the towers.

 

The Flame Towers
Thousands of light bars above each window change colour at night so that the towers resemble flames
Sorry to say I seemed to manage to catch two shades of blue - but they are often chased in red yellow or orange
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

Oil

 

Baku sits over one of the world's largest oil deposits.  So, as in Los Angeles, water holes and wells were often naturally polluted by oil and tar. This occasionally resulted in explosions and fire and was a nuisance to one and all. Yet after some simple distillation the resulting kerosene proved to be an alternative to more expensive animal and plant oils for use in lamps.

Soon the by-products of improving distillation methods included lubricants and heavy tar or pitch, which had a number of uses, together with a range of chemicals of interest to early chemists, some used in patent medicines. Thus mineral oil was of increasing economic value and natural seepage was soon insufficient to meet the growing demand. As a result Baku boasts the world's first industrially drilled oilwell, bored in 1846.  It's still here, adjacent to an active, producing, shaft.

 

The world's first industrially drilled oilwell, bored in 1846 
Nearby is one of hundreds of still active shafts

 

In 1886, forty years after this well was drilled, Karl Benz patented a four-stroke petrol (benzin) engine to automate the world's first self-powered vehicle (automobile) to go into series production.  Before this 'horseless-carriages' were playthings for the rich or backyard inventors, and in some towns had to be led by a servant, walking, with a red flag, to warn the public - and to avoid scaring the real horses.

Much of the fuel for these newfangled vehicles in Europe came from Baku.

Automobile development was rapid and with this came development of the fuel.  The full impact of early 20th century science was brought to bear. In institutions and laboratories from Moscow to Paris; Manchester to Chicago: ethane, methane, propane and benzene were identified; knocking factors (octane ratings) were codified; empowering additives, like tetraethyl lead, were developed. In increasingly complex 'oil refineries' mineral oil was cracked and reformed to increase the yields of various grades of fuels and lubricants.  Soon the wealthy drove in limousines on new smoother roads, surface sealed with bitumen. In the United States, Rockefeller, already dominating the lamp oil market with Standard Oil, would become the World's richest man.

Just fifteen years after Benz's invention the Wright Bothers powered their first 'Flyer' with a lightweight petrol engine of their own design, leading to another rush of innovation.  Another seven years later, in 1908, Henry Ford would begin to mass-produce the first 'peoples' car' (automobile), the Model T.  Meanwhile petroleum powered internal combustion engines would spin dynamos for industrial and domestic electric lights and the propellers of speed boats; launches; and fishing boats. 

Then in 1914 came the Great War.  Fighter aircraft, bombers, submarines and tanks had all become possible as the refining of mineral oil expanded in complexity; scope; and scale.  After the Great War, in which oil enabled the greatest slaughter of human life the planet had yet seen, it became central to world power-politics and commercially became known as: 'black gold'. 

So Baku, that produced about 15% of global oil production, was the new Eldorado, most of it controlled by British companies. Meanwhile, at the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had lost control of the Grozny oilfields to the White Army (see below) and Baku became their sole source of oil.  An alarmed Vladimir Lenin asserted in one of his speeches that: 'Soviet Russia can't survive without Baku oil'.

In 1939 a Second World War followed the First and Baku became the life blood of the Russian invasion of Poland, in collusion with Germany.  Hitler's perfidy became clear to Stalin when in July 1942 Germany and its allies (the 3rd Romanian Army) quickly overran all the Caucuses oil fields, in Chechnya and Baku. 

Ultimately Russia under Stalin, with US and British Imperial allies would be victorious over Germany.  More of that later in Georgia (below), where we visited Stalin's birthplace.

Thus today, oil, that was at the beginning of the 20th century little more than a nuisance, is a driving force in global power politics. 

When one stands on the shoreline in Baku, oil derricks dot the Caspian Sea as far as the eye can see and around the flats of the city donkey pumps see-saw, bringing up the 'black gold'. The Baku air has a distinctly oily aroma and a web of pipelines carry off the harvest to help sate Europe's endless thirst for oil and gas: to provide energy and in so doing to turn it into carbon dioxide.

In 2018 27.9 million barrels of oil were transported through the Azerbaijani part of the Baku-Supsa pipeline alone. 

 

Gobustan National Park

 

Nearly half of the world's mud volcanoes are located in Azerbaijan and included was a day trip to Gobustan National Park, an archaeological reserve, home to mud volcanoes and rock engravings. The mud volcanoes could not be reached by our bus so we transferred to a fleet of Lada taxis driven, close to the safe limit, across a desolate landscape of dirt roads by local drivers demonstrating their skill.  Several of the cars were around 30 years old and the Ladas were similar to the Fiats that I remember from the 1970's - basic but good cars.

The mud volcanoes stand up to four metres high and resemble boils or pustules on the face of the desolate landscape emitting regular burps of natural gas, mostly methane, blowing bubbles or squirts of mud.  These managed to catch almost everyone by surprise so that most/all of us got splattered with grey/black mud.   Disappointingly no one tried to light one.  I imagine that could be quite spectacular - a quick way of getting rid of unwanted hair - like carelessly lighting one of those old-fashioned gas water-heaters - that I'm old enough to remember.

 

Mud 'volcanoes' belching natural gas - mostly methane
When they burst they splatter the unwary with a spray of mud - no one gets away clean
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

Perhaps more interesting, and a lot less dirty, were the ancient petroglyphs on the previous sea shore of the Caspian, dating back between 5,000-40,000 years before present.  These are similar to some we saw in Uzbekistan and others around Australia.  They are difficult to date accurately, as some are quite recent and others are forgeries.  But the most reliably ancient depict animals long since extinct or record human activities no longer practiced, like ancient methods of hunting or fishing.  Gobustan is a well-researched site with over 600,000 ancient rock engravings and paintings that was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Interestingly one image appears to be of a Viking longboat.

 

Petroglyphs dating back between 5,000-40,000 years before present
One, obviously more recent image, from the Common Era, appears to be of a Viking longboat
There are more images in the Azerbaijan Album See more...

 

 

War with Armenia

 

Leaving Baku we would need to head north into Georgia because the border with Armenia is a war zone.  So it's not possible to cross it, at least not in a tour coach, with any safety. The present enmity dates back to 1917 but the roots are much earlier, perhaps going back to the 12th century and the arrival of Islam; or to the fourth century and the arrival of Christianity; or perhaps even to the 5th century BCE and the arrival of Zoroastrianism?

Coming forward to modern times, from the turn of the 19th century Tsar Nicholas II (the bloody) had made a series of catastrophic military mistakes that got worse at the start of the First World War.  So Russia was in turmoil, culminating in the first revolution at the beginning of 1917.  As a result the Russian Army of the Caucuses was withdrawn and the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire saw an opportunity to invade.  Muslim Azerbaijanis for their part saw their chance for independence.  But it did not go smoothly.  A bloody civil war broke out between ethnic (Christian) Armenians, who remembered the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, and (Muslim) Azerbaijanis, supporting the Turks.

Then in October there was a second, Bolshevik, Revolution in Russia and the Russian Civil War began. In Transcaucasia, particularly in Georgia, the Bolsheviks had been opposed by the Mensheviks (see later) and now inroads were being made by the anti-revolutionary forces known as White Russians (remember Dr Zhivago), who enjoyed initial military success here with western support. 

 

David Lean (movie) and Boris Pasternak (book) - a very popular story in the West during the Cold War
source: public domain

So neither side were in a position to stop the sectarian violence in Azerbaijan. In 1918 a new, but short lived, Azerbaijani Democratic Republic was declared by the separatists but failed to stop the fighting.  Social stability was not restored until 1920 when the Russian Civil War ended in a Bolshevik victory.  The Russians then prevailed and an Azerbaijani Soviet was established under Lenin.  People who had taken part in that violence were still unsatisfied and old memories, passed on to new generations, die hard.  So traditional enmities and disputes over territory flared up again when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians withdrew, yet again.  Our local guide made his still bitter partisan feelings on these matters quite clear.

 

Shamakhi

 

Our first stop on the way to Georgia was the ancient city of Shamakhi that was an important stop on the Silk Road. In Ancient Roman times it's mentioned in the writings of Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. 100 – c.  170 CE) and by several European explorers from the 12th century onwards.  In the 15th century the Venetian Giosafat Barbaro described Sammachi (sic) as:

"a good city; it has from four to five thousand houses, it produces silk, cotton as well as other things according to its tradition; it is situated in greater Armenia (Armenia grande) and the majority of its residents are Armenians"

On our way into Shamakhi we stopped at the Diri Baba Mausoleum (constructed in 1402) to entomb (Saint) Diribaba, a 'sacred person' (to Islam). Despite his relative modernity very little is known of this obviously much venerated person. Yet his mausoleum is still a place of pilgrimage and a centre for religious practice.  It's now also an important tourist attraction; a climbing challenge and test of one's propensity to acrophobia. My confidence was boosted by the thought that someone else would be the first to reveal the fatal weaknesses in the ancient structures. They are apparently devoid of regular maintenance and have no obvious OH&S constraints, like handrails or barriers.

 

Diri Baba Mausoleum
A test of one's propensity to acrophobia
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In the 16th century Shamakhi fell to the Safavid (Persian) dynasty and the first capital of the state of Shirvan was founded and the population became increasingly Muslim. This region is actively volcanic and earthquakes can be violent so that the city has been destroyed several times.  In addition there has been ongoing religious tension.

According to Wikipedia:

"In 1721, the Lezgins of the Safavid provinces of Shirvan and Dagestan, aided by the (rest of the) Sunni inhabitants of the area, sacked the city. They massacred thousands of its Shia inhabitants, apart from looting the city and robbing the property of its Christian inhabitants and foreign nationals, the latter which were mostly the city's many Russian merchants." 

The Russians (under Peter the Great - see: Russia on this website) responded to these attacks on Russians by invading and restoring order but then withdrew, leaving it to the Ottoman Turks (Sunni), who then lost it to the Persians/Iranians (Shia) who were then, in turn, defeated by the Russians in 1813.  As a result of all this, Azerbaijanis are predominantly Shia Muslims (nominally) and eventually ended up as part of the Soviet Union.  None of this very confusing past was very clearly explained by our local guide who was more concerned to name a great many heroes of their local culture (that went in one ear and out the other) and tell us about the evil Albanians.

So he was keen to take us to the now very modern Juma Mosque, the largest and perhaps most destroyed mosque in Azerbaijan. It's on the site of Azerbaijan's oldest mosque, the Arab built Friday Mosque (743-744 CE).

God demolished it more than once with His earthquakes - presumably as a test for the faithful - of their perseverance. Then in the 12th century it was demolished by the (Christian) Georgians.

More recently it was burnt, while still in an unfinished state, by the evil Albanians who, according to our outraged guide, also incinerated hundreds of innocent women; children; and old men in the burning building. As the fire is well recorded on a stone in the grounds but there is no memorial to, or mention of, the dead, I was sceptical. Yet I subsequently found an undocumented reference to the massacre on-line - so it must be true. 

 

Juma Mosque
On the site of Azerbaijan's oldest mosque, the Arab built Friday Mosque (743-744 CE)
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Kish

 

Then it was onwards and upwards to an Albanian Church in the village of Kish, again in a fleet of taxis as the street is steep and winding.  It's also described as an Albanian 'Temple' as the church is built over a pre-Christian temple. Construction of the existing Christian church building began around 990 and was completed around 1160 CE but the temple it was built over was much older. 

Radiocarbon dating of sacrificial objects found beneath the existing altar and in Bronze Age graves in the grounds revealed some to be around five thousand years old.  So the church is something of a time-capsule. Christianity was introduced here in the 1st century through St. Elisæus of Albania whose mission was to convert the polytheistic tribes. As I later discovered, among their observances, probably to appease to their angry earthquake and volcano generating gods, people here practiced human sacrifice (like Abraham - before his God, Yahweh, stopped him).  As I've noticed during our travels, human sacrifice seems to have been practiced in many earthquake zones and volcanic places - like other religious practices I suppose it works - until the next one.

Since Soviet times this site's been of considerable archaeological significance. Several Bronze Age graves found in the grounds are now opened, under glass, to reveal the skeletons of the ancient dead.

 

Albanian Church in the village of Kish
Radiocarbon dating of objects and graves found on the site revealed some to be around five thousand years old
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The Palace of Shaki Khans

 

Much more contemporary is the the Palace of Shaki Khans, completed in 1797 as a summer residence - around the same time as the Presidential White House in Washington DC.  But the Khan's lifestyle was somewhat different to that of George Washington or John Adams. The Khans (kings - after Genghis Kahn and the Khanates) typically had five wives and a household staffed by concubines and other women and managed by eunuchs (castrated males). In order to ensure the purity of the male succession sons who had reached puberty were also moved out of home.  So the family household needed to be insulated from the outside world and this was evident in the original architecture of the building. 

As I mention later, in Armenia, the Romantic Poet Lord Byron visited this region in 1876 on his Grand Tour.  He subsequently explored the Khan's domestic arrangements in his epic satirical poem Don Juan, in which the eponymous hero is smuggled into a Turkish seraglio (harem) as a woman and is kept a secret by several girls for their pleasure. 

This was the first time that the general public in Britain and the US had become aware of what was actually a very common upper-class domestic arrangement across the one-time Khanates, including China and India.  The poem was published sequentially in a series of Cantos.  It outraged polite society for its salacious content and thus became immensely popular, with each new Canto awaited like new episodes of Game of Thrones or Star Wars.  In a later Canto 'The Don' becomes a favourite in the Court of Catherine the Great of Russia and one of her numerous lovers.  After his earlier, less readable, epic poem, Childe Harold, Byron had been famously condemned as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'.  Now he became enormously wealthy, as well as notorious - a model for the Byronic Hero - like the Bronte's: Heathcliff and Rochester and Pushkin's: Eugene Onegin - 'hero' of Tchaikovsky's eponymous opera. Read more...

But this idyllic lifestyle (for the Khan) did not continue for long after building this palace, because, as we have seen, 16 years later the Khanate fell (a second time) to the Russian Empire - under Alexander I, Catherine the Great's grandson.

 

The Palace of Shaki Khans - its beauty has ensured its survival
 Within the fortress grounds is another Armenian Christian Church - now a museum

 

The palace was then used as offices by local government and suffered accordingly - drawing-pins in the woodwork? 

In 1848 Hussein Khan Mushtag's grandson, together with locally famous poet Karim agha Fateh, set about its restoration. In the 1950's it was renovated further, during Soviet times, as a national treasure then, more recently, when seeking it's nomination for UNESCO World Heritage listing, important to tourism.

Visiting this jewel box is via a guided tour (don't touch the walls).  Photos are banned inside so I can't show you pictures of the interior - but you can see one in Wikipedia and if you can find Joanna Lumley's Silk Tour Adventures on your device, there's quite a long segment, particularly admiring the windows (golly gosh).  Its beauty has ensured its survival from among a larger complex of palaces and administrative buildings, no longer extant, which once resided within the walls of the Sheki Khans' Fortress.  Yet they are not all gone.  Within the grounds we found another interesting building that turned out to be another Armenian Christian Church, used according to the sign, as a museum (closed). 

The following day we crossed into Georgia

 

Crossing to Georgia
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Georgia

 

Kakheti

 

Conveniently close to the border with Azerbaijan is the Khareba winery.

Tunnels driven into a hillside provide a stable temperature, obviating the need for more technological temperature control, and the winery uses both the ancient wine making method and the more familiar modern process employing stainless steel vessels and oak barrels.  We went to see it and have a taste. They produce a very acceptable drop at a competitive price-point.  While each of the Caucasian countries we visited produce some good wines, we found the wines in Georgia to be the most price competitive. 

Evidence of wine making, using fermented grape juice, can be found as early as 7,000 years ago in Georgia.  The method used then was similar to the method still used here for some specialist wines.  It employs a large clay vessel that is buried in the wine cellar up to its lip.  The crushed grapes, skin seeds and all is placed into this and encouraged to ferment using plunger like tools to stir and separate the solids from the wine. When ready it's decanted into bottles and stored. Recent analysis of pottery vessels in France revealed that, in addition to making beer and mead, the ancient Celts were actually importing similar wine from Greece over 2,500 years ago.

 

Khareba Winery
In the traditional method a large vessel, like the one behind the singers, is set into the ground, like the one beneath my feet
The tasting tables can be seen down the adjoining tunnel
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Gremi

 

Our next stop was at the town of Gremi, once the capital of the Kingdom of Kakheti and a well-known trading town on the Silk Road.  Until the 17th century Gremi was largely populated by Armenian Christians but in in 1615 the city was completely destroyed by the armies of Shah Abbas I of Persia and was effectively abandoned. The heavily fortified Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel alone survived the attack.  Another hill to climb.

 

The Church of the Archangels
Following its destruction by invading Muslims the nearby town of Gremi never recovered its former fame or glory
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Many of us in the secular West are unaware that both Testaments of the Bible demand that women should be modestly dressed as women (not in men's clothing) and cover their hair when in a holy place.  Like other rules still observed by Jews and Muslims these are often ignored in many Christian societies today.  Yet here in Georgia, where there has been an eighteen hundred year struggle with Islam, the same rules apply when entering a church as when entering a mosque. Scarfs are provided to cover heads and skirts to put around pants (men's clothes).

Throughout this trip, organised by ExPat Explore, the accommodation was generally of a high standard. Members of our tour were particularly enamoured of this night in a four star country-club resort with an excellent buffet-style breakfast.

 

Overnight accommodation - among the best - no golf was played

 

 

Signagi

 

On our way to Tibilsi, Georgia's Capital, we stopped at Signagi, a fortified town with winding cobblestone streets. 

The town, which stands in a commanding position above the Alazani Valley, was fortified in the 18th century with defensive walls; 23 towers; and 6 gates, against invading tribesmen.  After the Russian invasion, in the early 19th century, it was annexed to Imperial Russia and later became part of the Soviet Union. 

This is a particularly picturesque part of the world.  In soviet times Signagi became a centre for the Georgian wine industry and a popular holiday destination. Today Signagi is known as Georgia's city of love, where many Georgians choose to stay on their wedding night.

Like much of Georgia it was hard hit by the collapse of the Soviet Union and some evidence of the ensuing decay remains. But as we could easily see, much has recovered and in general Signagi appears to be prosperous again (even more so?).

 

Signagi - Georgia's city of love
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Tbilisi (tbi-lisi)

 

Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia and like the country in general it is attractive and would be more so if there were less cars. By some coup of marketing there is a preponderance of Toyota Priuses (or is it Prii). 

The city has its origins in the 6th century battles for the Caucasus between the Persians (Iranians) who were at the time Zoroastrians and the Europeans who were Christian.  By tradition Tbilisi is said to have been founded by 32nd King of Iberia:  Vakhtang I Gorgasali (c. 447/49 – 502/22) a Christian allied to the Byzantine Empire (Romans), who also reorganised the Georgian Orthodox Church and set the religious foundations of the region.

Standing above the city is the Narikala Fortress which may predate the city and is said to have been an earlier Persian stronghold. Vakhtang I vanquished the Zoroastrians and extended the fortifications but a century later the Muslim Umayyads (Arabs) would arrive to assert their world view, in their turn, expanding the fortifications. 

These again proved to be insufficient when in 1121 the Christian King David IV would overcome them and drive the Arabs from the country, beginning Georgia's 'Golden Age'. 

Again the Narikala Fortress would be expanded and modernised. But in 1222 2,000 light cavalry of Genghis Khan arrived and decisively routed the larger Georgian army.  So the country fell to the Mongols. The Mongols were generally religiously tolerant, provided people were subservient and paid their taxes.  Thus Georgia remained Christian, though many churches and monasteries complained about their metaphysical observances being taxed.  In turn, the Mongols strengthened the Narikala Fortress that they named the 'Little Fort'.

Now Georgia was part of a properly managed Khanate people went about their business relatively unmolested. It would not last.

In 1346 the bubonic plague (the Black Death) arrived, wiping out an estimated half of the population, followed by the first Timurid invasion.  Timur (Tamerlane - 'The sword of Islam' see elsewhere on this website) sacked Tbilisi in 1386 occasioning more postbellum repairs to the fort. 

Despite Timur's repeated attacks in the cause of jihad, eight in total, often damaging or demolishing churches, Georgia remained stubbornly Christian and was eventually recognised by Timur as such.  His most bitter fights were with fellow Muslims. In the Elizabethan Christopher Marlowe's play: Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587) he is depicted as becoming progressively anti-Muslim.

In the 15th century Tbilisi was the centre of further battles for dominance by a variety of kings and tyrants so that the fortress was repeatedly damaged and rebuilt. Today most of the fortifications we see are even more recent, dating from the Russian incursions, mentioned above, starting in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1827 the fortress was again damaged not by war but (alternatively): by the explosion of Russian munitions; and/or by an earthquake; depending on who you ask.  As fire often accompanied an earthquake when lighting, cooking and heating involved open flames, and gunpowder can be set-off with a hammer or something heavy falling - an earthquake seems a likely culprit if munitions also exploded.

 

Narikala Fortress - much rebuilt since the fifth century
seen from the cable car from Rike Park on the opposite bank of the Mtkvari river up to the Fortress.

 

Nearby there is an excellent lookout over the city.

 

Tbilisi seen from the Fortress
The peace bridge (blue arch) can be seen connecting to the disused Opera House
and in the distance the mushroom building housing government offices
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The disused Opera House
and the Peace Bridge from Rike Park

 

Tbilisi is surrounded by ravines, canyons and valleys.  The Old Town has long been renowned for its healing Sulphur Baths said to give relief to sufferers of various ailments, including skin conditions and arthritis.  It's a great place to bathe if you don't mind sharing with sufferers of scrofula, tinea or lupus.  But my hesitancy aside, for many centuries health cures have been a significant driver of international commerce and Tbilisi has long benefited from a stream of visitors wanting to take a dip in mineralised water.

 

In addition to subterranean sulphurous waters this is a well-watered part of the world
This waterfall, a short distance from the old town, is in a popular location for wedding photographs
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A nearby bridge over the stream is covered in locks, symbolising endless love or maybe the institution of marriage.  One lay open in the water - make of that what you will.

 

Locks - symbolising endless love - one lay open in the water below

 

As a result of the ebb and flow of conquerors Tbilisi (al-Tefelis) became a centre of trade between the Islamic world and northern Europe. So although Georgia is predominantly Christian there remains a smaller Muslim community in Tbilisi and the Sunnite Mosque has stood in Botanical Street since the 19th century. 

 

Religion in Tbilisi - the Sunnite Mosque and Metekhi Church (since 1988)
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Our travel notes told us:

'Acting as the fortress and residence of the Georgian tsars, it [Metekhi Church] often came under attack and was almost demolished during the Great Purge that took place across the Soviet Union in the 1930s.' 

Checking this out on-line I discovered that the Metekhi Church had ceased to function as a church back in the 17th century when the prominence, upon which the church stands, was fortified as a defensive citadel.  By the 19th century, under the Russians, the church building was being used as a barracks. In 1819 the citadel was removed and the church building was incorporated into a gaol. In 1938, at the end of Stalin's Great Purge (see below) the gaol, that had become infamous, was demolished, the church building alone surviving to become a theatre.  In the 1988 the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II successfully campaigned to restore the church to the Georgian Patriarchate.

 

Gudauri

 

After a day out and about in Tbilisi it was time for an excursion up the Georgian Military Highway almost as far as the border into the Russian Republic of North Ossetia–Alania (see the introduction above). 

Not far out of Tbilisi we soon realised that we were into the countryside - where the traditional role of shepherd is still practiced.

 

Neither the sheep nor their shepherds seemed to be in much of a hurry
too bad if the military wanted to use their highway
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These days the Military Highway's use is commercial as many semi-trailers grind their way back and forth to Russia in the facilitation of trade and travellers make their way to the ski fields around Gudauri and Stepantsminda. 

 

Georgian Skiing Villages - around Stepantsminda

 

But our ultimate goal was the 14th century Gergeti Trinity Church - elevation of 2170 meters (7120 feet)

Initially our trip was by coach into the mountains but as the going got tough the tough got going and we transferred to several 4 wheel drive min-vans.

 

Gergeti Trinity Church and environs
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On the way up we'd spotted the Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument with the promise that we'd stop here on the way back for a 'comfort stop'. 

Throughout the trip these stops had played havoc with our schedule.  None of the coaches had an on-board toilet so that regular stops were essential.  Sometimes a shopping mall or restaurant would have multiple toilets but other times there would be just one or two. An average of two minutes per person 33 people - do the maths. It wasn't long before some of us resorted to finding a convenient bush and this is where that solution fell to almost everyone.  The portable toilets were chained closed!  

 

The Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument
Great views - but 'inconvenient'

 

Gori - Stalin's birthplace

 

Georgia has an important place in both Russia's ancient and modern history.

Together with Armenia it formed an important Christian buffer against the Ottoman Empire in Tsarist times then became a hotbed of the last Tsar's Marxist opponents.  It was also the birthplace of: Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin) - known fondly as 'Uncle Joe' by Australian WW2 Diggers (soldiers). 

So our next tour outing was promised to be to Gori, to: 'see and explore the Joseph Stalin Museum and the house he was born in'.

Here we saw a preserved house within a protective shell in which Stalin had lived with his parents. His father had a shoemaking business in the cellar. Adjacent were carriages from his famous train.

 

One of Stalin's several boyhood homes - preserved
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Initially successful in his trade, Stalin's father fell prey to that very Russian affliction: alcoholism - perhaps after losing two sons. The business failed and his father became violently abusive to both mother and child. His parents separated. 

Joseph was a bright child and his mother was determined to see him educated.  After attending a rough school in Gori, where as a poor kid he learned to fight, he gained a scholarship to the Tiflis (Tbilisi) Spiritual Seminary, where he excelled. But as a youth he was struck-down by the chicken pox, that scared his face for life, and when crossing the street, the carriage of a wealthy Georgian ran him over, permanently damaging his left arm. 

He was thus primed for class-war and having read Karl Marx's Das Kapital became a Marxist and declared himself an atheist - religion being: the opium of the masses - much to the distress of his teachers. Yet his time in religious education would stay with him for life.  Like Hitler, who also had a religious education, he became notoriously superstitious.  'Give me a boy until he is seven and I'll show you the man,' quoth Aristotle (although not a Jesuit nor even a monotheist). 

In both cases their education contributed to the development of messianic visionaries who believed that the world could be reshaped to their will.  Both had big personalities and became persuasive speakers able to recruit others to their cause.  Hitler offered Germans and their racial cousins a Tausendjähriges (Thousand-Year) Reich and Stalin the world's working classes a Worker's Paradise.

 

Images from Stalin's youth and revolutionary period

 

Until coming here I had taken Churchill's assessment of Stalin as an 'ignorant peasant' to be accurate - after all they had met and dealt.

But I discovered that far from being an ignorant peasant Stalin was both intelligent and highly literate.  He spoke at least two languages, edited several newspapers and authored numerous books that are on display here.  His biographers note that he was well-read and intellectual but also an unrepentant killer. As for being a 'peasant', like many socialist leaders he wanted to be seen as a man of the people and played and dressed the part.

Yet he was also the product of turbulent revolutionary times with bitter internecine battles between the socialists themselves.  One is reminded of the still waring Communist parties we discovered in Nepal. Read more...

As a young radical Stalin co-edited a Georgian Marxist newspaper, Proletariatis Brdzola (Proletarian Struggle).

Around this time the Georgian Marxists split between Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks and Julius Martov's Mensheviks with the Mensheviks prevailing, to Stalin's dismay.

 

My Struggle - oh sorry! That was the other one (Mein Kampf) - 'The people's flag is deepest red...' That's better!
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Stalin shared Lenin's vision of the future and how it should be structured and detested the Mensheviks ('splitters' - as satirised in Monty Python's Life of Brian) who were at that time still supported by Lenin's eventual revolutionary partner Leon Trotsky.  Stalin's famous rivalry with Trotsky began as a young man in Georgia.

Soon Stalin became known to the Tsarist police as a dangerous revolutionary and was arrested then gaoled in Baku. In gaol he was a nuisance: organising the prisoners to support his cause and ordering the execution of turncoats. He was removed and exiled. He escaped from exile dressed as a woman and made it to Saint Petersburg where he became the founding editor of the newspaper Pravda (Truth). He was again arrested and again escaped. 

The museum has a model of an elaborate safe house and a complex map depicting his various places of incarceration.  His first child, Vasily, was born during this period to his first wife. Two more acknowledged children were born during his second marriage. He was seldom without at least one woman in his life and had at least two illegitimate children.  The only child who had survived him when he died in 1953 was Svetlana, who was by then living in the United States.

The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 was led by Lenin and Trotsky.  During the Civil War that followed Stalin was more brutally effective and moved progressively closer to Lenin.  So that when Lenin died in January 1924 it was Stalin and not Trotsky who succeeded as leader.

Stalin then set about industrialising the Soviet Union, at the same time wrecking its agriculture, in part because of his doctrinal support, based on Marxist principles, for the faulty theories of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Read more...

 

Trotsky, Stalin and Lenin (at the April 1917 conference in Moscow) - Tapestry for the true believers:  Lenin and Stalin (sans Trotsky)
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Within three years of his supremacy Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party. In another two he was exiled. 

In exile Trotsky mobilised international Marxists to his cause.  Stalin responded by arresting prominent Trotskyites and initiated the infamous 'show trials' of 1936-37 in which dozens of former revolutionaries submissively confessed, while comically holding up their pants, in front of the international newsreel cameras. The world saw them admit to many crimes including to plotting with Trotsky to kill Stalin and several others among his leadership.  They were sentenced to death and Trotsky was similarly sentenced in absentia.

Then began the Great Purge.

Wikipedia tells us that:

In July 1937, the Politburo ordered a purge of 'anti-Soviet elements' in society, targeting anti-Stalin Bolsheviks, former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, priests, ex-White Army soldiers, and common criminals. That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. 00447, listing 268,950 people for arrest, of whom 75,950 were executed.  He also initiated 'national operations', the ethnic cleansing of non-Soviet ethnic groups—among them Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese - through internal or external exile.  During these years, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,000 were shot, and an unknown number died under NKVD torture.

Needless to say many of these former Mensheviks had been Stalin's opponents back in Georgia.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Trotsky and his wife fled to Mexico City where they moved in with the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife.  Trotsky and Kahlo began an affair and Rivera chucked the Trotskys out.  The Trotskys moved a couple of blocks away where Trotsky came under repeated attack from Stalin's agents. He survived two bungled assassination attempts before an assassin dealt him a fatal blow, with an ice-axe, in August 1940. 

Of course killing Trotsky was by then a tiny drop in Stalin's already overflowing bucket. 

So here we were learning about this wonderful man who built modern Russia - it was just like visiting George W Bush's Presidential Library.  Read more...

As Nazi Germany gained strength, with the support of Mussolini's Fascists and Franco's Nationalists, and a Second World War loomed, Stalin secretly colluded with Hitler to invade Poland.  

Initially the joint invasion of Poland went well.  Germany took the linguistically Polish-dominated areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province and began rounding up Jews and Roma.  The Soviet Union took Lithuania and began killing Polish dissidents and intellectuals. 

Not content with these territorial gains Stalin then attempted to take Finland.  But the Finns where on familiar territory; had well trained properly equipped, dedicated defenders; and an officer corps who knew what they were doing. 

Although Stalin had substantially increased the size of the Red army he had simultaneously purged many of the experienced officers who posed a potential threat to his leadership. In 1938 three out of five Soviet marshals: Alexander Ilyich Yegorov; Vasily Blyukher; Tukhachevsky; were put to death, at least one beaten to death, and several thousands of the Red Army officers were arrested or shot.

He had also purged scientists and engineers who supported reactionary theories like: Darwinism and Relativity, contributing to a serious famine and subsequently injuring the war effort (see the development of RADAR on this website).  When the United States, in cooperation with Britain, developed and exploded the first atom bombs he would have to hurriedly bring back dozens of scientists from exile in Siberia.

Not for the first or the last time the Russians threw untrained; incompetently led; ill-equipped; and uncommitted; troops into battle against much smaller number of superior troops and got slaughtered.  Under the bloody Tsar Nicholas II who'd overruled his admirals, because he had God on his side, they'd incompetently lost an entire navy to the Japanese, who lost virtually nothing, and now the Japanese remained a problem on their Eastern border.

Hitler took note. In June 1941 he staged a surprise invasion of Russia.  At first Stalin would not believe it was happening.  Then among his first responses was to order the killing of around 100,000 Russian political prisoners lest they escape. The German advance was initially very fast, overrunning the Red Army, but Stalin had a secret weapon, the proclaimed atheist had a sacred icon put in a plane and flown in circles around Moscow. 

Hitler for his part was equivocating, consulting his astrologer as to what to do next.  Winter closed in and the German troops had no cold weather clothes or vehicles. The war bogged down for three more years.

In the meantime the United States had joined Britain and the free French against the Axis (Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan).  Stalin, now desperate, turned to the allies. 

 

Soviet - English Negotiations 1944 with Churchill - Later with the US and FD Roosevelt

 

US weapons poured in and now, after years of fighting, Russia had some experienced officers.  As we learn everywhere in the former Soviet Union, it was they who now rose-up and defeated Germany, not the troops landing at Normandy, as we've always been told on ANZAC day.  In reality it was six of one, half a dozen of the other - one would probably not have succeeded without the other. 

 

How the War was won
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The Soviet Union certainly spilled the most blood. During the conflict the Soviet Union lost 8.7 million soldiers and around 19 million civilians. This was more than all the other combatants in World War II combined - the Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan - included.

Over 40 million Soviet deaths are attributed directly to Stalin, far surpassing Hitler's death camps. How much of this slaughter of Soviet youth and innocent civilians was a direct result of his mismanagement and paranoia?

Yet mismanagement and paranoia were not the only factors.  For this man any means justified his end.  Like Hitler, who dreamed of an heroic Arian Utopia, Stalin's youthful dream of a Worker's Paradise justified any sacrifice - by others.

It's many years since Stalin lost his heroic reputation in Russia. Now even this museum is beginning to revise its representation of the man. Yet many tourists are still happy to be photographed beside his statue.  Would they as happily stand beside Hitler?

 

 

After Stalin's death in March 1953 it was barely five years before he started to become anathema in the Soviet Union.  In February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union denounced Stalin as having fostered a 'leadership cult of personality', in contravention of the ideals of Communism.

There is a documentary on YouTube on Stalin's life: 'Monster: A Portrait of Stalin in Blood' - Executive producer: Alexander Ivankin - 1991 (note the year). It was written and researched in Moscow using official archival material. It's 50 minutes long, so settle in if you are interested. Watch here...

Denouncing Stalin did not go down well in Georgia where riots resulted; but to no avail - their hero was dead and now his reputation was set to go through the mud. The process of de-Stalinisation had begun and would now gain pace.  In 1961 Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.  In 1962 Stalin Peak, the highest mountain in the Soviet Union became Communism Peak.  The mountain is in Tajikistan (Read more...) and is now Ismoili Somoni Peak.  Stalin's name would soon be erased almost everywhere - except here.

For his part Khrushchev became Premier but then himself fell from grace, soon after his sparring partner, US President Kennedy, was assassinated, to be ousted by Leonid Brezhnev who was no lover of Stalin either.  The last nails in Stalin's coffin would be hammered home under Premier Gorbachev's policies of: perestroika - restructuring and glasnost - openness. 

 

 

Mtskheta

 

Our next stop was at the fortified Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (the Cathedral of the Living Pillar) at Mtskheta. 

The present Cathedral was completed in 1029 but has been damaged on several occasions by earthquakes; Arabs and Persians; and even our old friend from Uzbekistan, Timur. 

Under Imperial Russia it was whitewashed damaging the frescos but restoration - as a masterpiece of the Early Middle Ages not as a working church - began in Soviet times. 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union religion again blossomed dormant like seeds after rainfall.  Across the former Soviet Union religions of all hues have sprung up again, their seeds having survived in the language and culture of the many lands and peoples.

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral it is restored as a fully functioning Georgian Orthodox basilica.

 

Again Georgian Christians worship, marry, Baptise and are celebrated in death here
As are the faithful of other traditions in mosques, synagogues and temples across the former Soviets, including Russia 
There are more images in the Georgia Album See more...

 

The pillar in its name refers to a structure over the spot at which Christ's last mantle (shirt) was buried, over which an older church was built in the 4th century. 

In the days of the monarchy Georgian kings were crowned here and ten are known to be buried here, along with at least one queen.

 

The pillar under which Christ's mantle lies and a royal grave
 Christian Sacraments

 

The defensive wall that surrounds the Cathedral (featuring gun emplacements and eight towers) was a lively public space around Independence Day and quite entertaining in its own right.

 

People having fun - the horse was too - out alone on the town
There are more images in the Georgia Album See more...

 

 

Independence Day - Tbilisi

 

Back in Tbilisi the traffic was close to deadlock, made worse than usual by road closures around Georgian Independence Day. 

Although our hotel was not on a main thoroughfare, the back streets leading to it were not coach friendly, with impossibly tight corners and low hanging wires. So after one, almost failed, approach on arrival, from then on, the group went to and from the big bus in several minibuses.

This time not even the minibuses could make it so we went on foot. Our hotel was on an unprepossessing street but had turned out to be very comfortable and while vehicles were problematic it was only about fifteen minutes on foot to the city centre in one direction and to Liberty Square in the other.

 

Georgia Independence Day - Liberty Square and fireworks
That's St George killing a mythical foe on the post - the military have others in mind
Georgia, once in the Warsaw Pact, has sought membership of NATO - right on Russia's border
With 10 other former Soviet Republics it's a member of the NATO aligned, Orwellian titled: 'Partnership for Peace'. 
We've got you surrounded Putin! But we're friendly. Don't be so paranoid!

 

We also found some quite nice places to eat nearby.

 

A couple of the several Georgian eateries we patronised in Tbilisi
There are more images in the Georgia Album See more...

 

Now it was time to move on to Armenia. The coach took us to the border where we would cross to yet another coach, and another local guide, on the other side. 

 

Leaving Georgia to Armenia
There are more images in the Georgia Album See more...

 

 

 

Armenia

 

Akhtala

Our first stop after crossing the border was the fortified Akhtala Byzantine Monastery, known for its 13th Century artistic frescoes. 

It's well positioned for defence and the site has been in use since the Bronze Age (13th century BCE), the derivation of the name 'Akhtala' being 'copper mine'.  The main gate and part of the wall remains but outlying buildings and other defences are in ruins. 

 

Akhtala Monastery
There are more images in the Armenia Album See more...

 

It's said that when Timur (Tamerlane) arrived here he was admiring the church alone when he heard the sound of a baby.  He decided that the cry had come from the painting of the Virgin and Child on the dome above the alter. So he ordered their beheading. The story says that the cry had come from a real baby hidden from the invaders with its mother and others in the space behind the alter. 

We had fun speculating how his troops went about fulfilling Timur's order and decided it they must have used a large projectile, perhaps fired from an early cannon, a century before the Ottoman and Arabic 'Gunpowder Empires' - where cannon were first used in battle. 

Timur was technologically adept and highly intelligent, outsmarting the best of his opponents. He'd moved water courses to hamper opposing armies and used fire-camels against war elephants so why not? Read more...

Fortunately, despite a propensity for levelling entire cities and mercilessly slaughtering their inhabitants, Timur was quite intellectual and eclectic in his interests, frequently sparing structures he liked. By his lights a civilised man. So the church got off well - it's still standing.

 

Focussed damage to behead an image of the Virgin and Child - attributed Tamerlane
It looks as if quite accurately shot from below - was it done with a projectile? Gunpowder?
There are more images in the Armenia Album See more...

 

That Armenia is not as well off as Georgia was immediately apparent from the state of the regional roads the peoples' houses and the ruined industrial infrastructure.  Dozens of large industrial sites lie abandoned rusting and crumbling away.  Our guide told us that when the Soviet Union collapsed Armenia was particularly hard hit and as we learned in Azerbaijan, came under almost immediate attack - or was it the other way around?   Industry collapsed workers lost their jobs, the Russians who had provided local government and technical knowhow departed and social infrastructure and social security collapsed.  People in the cities starved. It took some time for competent government to be re-established.    

 

There seemed to be endless abandoned industrial buildings some of them old copper smelters
In places the regional roads are so bad that we were reduced to walking pace - dodging potholes

 

In particular the electricity failed when the Russian maintained Nuclear Power Plant was shut down. This was built without secondary containment around the reactors, like Chernobyl.  After Chernobyl even the Russians were having second thoughts.  And this one is in an earthquake zone.  Yet the impact of its closure was so dire that it was reopened.   One reactor is still running.  Checking this out on-line I learned that: 

The Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, also known as the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, is located 36 kilometres west of Yerevan. Two model V-230 reactors, each of 407.5 MWe gross (376 MWe net), were built at Metsamor on solid basalt and supplied power from 1976 and 1980 respectively. Design operating lifetime was 30 years... One of these is still running. The operating licence has been extended to 2021. In September 2013 Russia announced an agreement to undertake works to extend the operating lifetime of the plant by ten years, and in May 2014 Russia agreed to provide $300 million for upgrading the plant to enable lifetime extension to 2026.  It has survived one major earthquake without damage.  The combination of design and location of Metsamor has been claimed to make it among the most dangerous nuclear plants in the world. 
(sources: World Nuclear Association; Wikipedia)

The plan, that, as an advocate of nuclear power in place of fossil fuel, I applaud, is to replace it with a safe, modern plant. Given the decaying state of Soviet era infrastructure in the country at large we can only hope that they are speedy about it.

 

Odzun and Haghpat

 

Not far from the Akhtala Monastery, in the Lori Province, is the village of Odzun where we stopped at an enterprising family's house for lunch. The family prepares traditional local food for coach loads of tourists and keeps bees in their garden as an attraction - to help keep the guests amused. And so we were. The family was charming; the meal was very nice; and the bees - well - they were European honey bees - just like the ones apiarists keep in Australia - except the hives were painted blue/green instead of white and seemed a little smaller. Apparently it's where honey comes from!

Here it was very evident that people have been living from hand to mouth for years, as our local guide told us: since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dreadful mismanagement that followed.

 

In the village of Odzun it was very evident that people - and animals - have been 'doing it tough'
Someone was living in that house

 

Quite nearby, still in the in the Lori Province, is another 10th century Byzantine Monastery: the UNESCO World Heritage site of Haghpat.   Wikipedia tells me that the monastery at Haghpat was chosen as an UNESCO World Heritage Site because the monastic complex: 

represents the highest flowering of Armenian religious architecture, whose unique style developed from a blending of elements of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture and the traditional vernacular architecture of the Caucasian region.'

 

Haghpat Monastery:  'the highest flowering of Armenian religious architecture,
whose unique style developed from a blending of elements of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture
and the traditional vernacular architecture of the Caucasian region'

 

Unlike the earlier monastery it did not seem to have been fortified. I found this interesting and was motivated to look it up in Wikipedia.  Read more...

It certainly enjoys a spectacular setting - countryside that was also enjoyed by our comfortably commodious hotel for the night.

 

The views from the balconies of our hotel suite
The meals (evening and breakfast) were also very satisfactory

 

 

Dilijan

 

The next day presented another challenge for the coach taking us to the next place of interest, the resort town of Dilijan, having been turned back because our first route was impassable by large vehicles.

 

This was the alternative - the good road
 

Near Dilijan we were scheduled to have a traditional lunch at another family home.  This time in a religious community - the Molokan people - the largest religious minority in Armenia.  They're Protestants, exiled from Russia in the 19th Century.  As we quickly discovered in Russian supermarkets in a McCafé, 'moloko' is milk (you know - to put in your: кофе - kofe - café). 

So these Protestants have little to do with Luther and his 95 theses.   They have their origins a lot earlier in the 11th century and the Christianisation of Turkic migrants to Russia, from Mongolia and Siberia, whose traditional diet relied heavily on dairy products. 

The Orthodox Church in Russia stipulates 200 days of fasting during which milk drinking is prohibited*.  A dispensation from this rule at their Conversion to Christianity set the Molokans apart and they soon gained outcast status, acquiring the, initially pejorative, name, and obliging them to turn to the Scriptures for inspiration rather than to the Church.

*I don't know how Russian cows coped - don't they need to be milked every day? Perhaps dairy farmers made cheese during the fast?

By the time of Catherine the Great the Molokans were a barely tolerated minority who practiced the biblical (Protestant) sacraments collectively, within their own community, making their marriages illegal in the eyes of the Russian Church. Worse, they were opposed to serfdom (as slavery) and were pacifists, refusing to fight in the Tsar's wars. 

Anyway, like other Protestants they were Evangelical and troublesome in a country where the Tsars relied on the Orthodox Church for their 'divine' authority to rule.  Accused of heresy in the 19th Century they were rounded up and expelled to a remote part of the Empire - the Caucasus.

Our tour group turned out to be very interested in their religious beliefs, it was raining outside and, like the Mormons, they were more than happy to share.  These principles seemed quite familiar: they're based on scripture and on direct personal access to God, without the intercession of a priesthood. 

In the Christian spectrum of beliefs they are said to resemble Presbyterians, although the evolution of their principles preceded Calvin by several centuries.  Reading from the same songbook, I suppose. 

In this they received approbation from at least two of our more evangelical compatriots.  No doubt Australia's new Prime Minister, 'Scomo', would also be singing from that songbook.

Anyway, they showed us how they make bread in a traditional clay oven, these not horizontal as in Tajikistan, but interestingly set into the ground, like an elaboration of the winemaking vessels in Georgia. The lunch, as always in Armenia, was good too.

 

As we left the village we encountered a Molokan wedding
Despite their intimate interactions with the Trinity it had not been blessed with perfect weather

 

At Dilijan we were again pleasantly surprised by the first really modern accommodation in this somewhat dilapidated country, that we were coming to like a lot, principally because of the people we were meeting and their evident ability to make the most of anything thrown at them.

 

Best Western - Dilijan - our first really modern accommodation in Armenia
It featured an impressive PV solar installation of which this is part
The much rubbed threesome in town is a monument to the heroes of the Soviet era comic film: Mimino
with which some on our bus were enthusiastically familiar - it vaguely rang a bell

 

As can be seen from the images it had been raining and was sodden underfoot, nevertheless hardier among us decided to go ahead with the promised hike up from the bus accessible road into the Dilijan National Park to the Haghartsin Monastery.  On a nice fine day on a dry track this would have been a stroll in the park but in the rain the track was more like a stream, with exceptionally slippery mud, so that in places it was on pace forward, slide two back.  At last, most of us made it to the Monastery and its remaining Church.  Then, although the rain had stopped, getting back down, without falling over in the mud, presented a new challenge.  After that the hotel was certainly welcome and I, at least, felt as if I'd been out in the countryside. 

 

The remaining Church of  the Haghartsin Monastery
the rain had stopped by then but my lens had not recovered

 

 

Lake Sevan

 

The following morning, after an excellent breakfast at the Best Western, it was a short drive to Lake Sevan and the Sevanavank Monastery.

Our local guide told us that it was the biggest lake in the world, according to some narrow classification: was it elevation or volume?  This engendered a discussion among the fellow travellers, who we discovered had each been to many other countries and locations around the world before thinking of travelling to Armenia as it's not usually at the top of most tourist's 'bucket list'.

Among the group were those, like us, who'd been to Lake Titicaca: 

 

One of my photographs taken on Lake Titicaca (See more...)
Surface elevation: just over eight kilometres above sea level
Surface area: over eight thousand square kilometres
Volume: more than 800 cubic kilometres
 

Others had been to Lake Baikal in Siberia the largest exposed freshwater lake on the planet, with a volume of 24,000 cubic kilometres and a surface area of over 31 thousand square kilometres. But it's less than half a kilometre above sea level, so it's not an alpine lake.

Lake Sevan is definitely an alpine lake, with an elevation of 1.9 kilometres. Yet with a water volume of 33 cubic kilometres and a surface area of just over one thousand square kilometres it's dwarfed by Titicaca. 

Nevertheless our guide still has grounds for pride. Lake Sevan is among the top ten alpine lakes in the world and it's unquestionably the largest freshwater alpine lake in the previous Soviet Union.  And surprisingly we were not yet monasteried-out, so the Sevanavank Monastery added charmingly to the picturesque quality of the lake views.      

 

Lake Sevan - unquestionably the highest freshwater lake in the Caucasus
and the Sevanavank Monastery

 

Although Lake Sevan never held as much water as its big brother on the border of Bolivia and Peru, it was once much larger than it is now. 

At the end of the last glaciation the lake filled its entire basin an area of over five thousand square kilometres.  But as the ice melt ended it shrank under natural climate change to about 1,416 square kilometres in 1936. 

That's when man intervened to accelerate this shrinkage.  Under Stalin's industrialisation, like the Aryl Sea in Uzbekistan, the lake was tapped, via a tunnel, for hydroelectricity and irrigation and the level fell by nearly 20 metres in a couple of decades.  This was causing very obvious environmental damage, devastating communities along the lake shore.  So representations were made to Khrushchev, who was inclined to reverse anything Stalin had done. So in 1964 the construction of two new tunnels was begun to divert the waters of the Arpa and Vorotan rivers to Lake Sevan.

The Arpa tunnel was completed in 1981 but the second was delayed by damage due to the devastating Armenian earthquake that struck in December 1988; the collapse of the Soviet Union; and war with Azerbaijan. It was finally completed in 2004 and since that time Lake Sevan has been rising steadily. But it still has some way to go before making good Stalin's depreciations.

Our local guide had an amusing story about how Nikita Khrushchev, a gullible Russian, was tricked into authorising the remediation tunnels by a wily Armenian (popular leader Anton Kochinyan). It was he who also allegedly tricked Leonid Brezhnev*, another gullible Russian, into authorising the Yerevan Metro.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, who was Russia's mercurial 'Trump like' leader, when I started to take an interest in High School, often gets bad press.  As I was told by the guide at Lenin's Tomb, in Red Square in Moscow, unlike other Russian Premiers, Nikita is not buried here because he was mad. 

 

Fortunately for Armenia, the trout were thus saved from extinction, because they subsequently provided a major food source for the Armenian people during the post-Soviet collapse.  

 

The fish of Lake Severn provided a major staple for the Armenian people during the post-Soviet famine
they remain an important resource today
There are more images in the Armenia Album See more...

 

 

Geghard Monastery

 

Departing Lake Sevan our next scheduled stop was 60 kilometres more or less due-south, at the UNESCO listed Geghard Monastery.  The countryside was now less mountainous and the roads were correspondingly better.

On the way we would stop to get our first glimpse of Mount Ararat, the mountain on which Noah's Ark is said to have come to rest as the Flood subsided.

Another aspect of the modern highway was that it had in places been cut through mounds of volcanic scree (talus). This was like a plumb pudding, with loose rocks and pumice and lumps of obsidian - black volcanic glass, like plums. Our tour leader asked the driver to stop and the entire group went fossicking and chipping and breaking to produce razor sharp edges - potential stone-age tools.    

 

Obsidian fossicking - something different - stone-age tools

 

As advertised in our itinerary, we also stopped at a lookout: across the plain to the volcanoes on the horizon in Turkey: Ararat and little Ararat. Disappointingly they were shrouded in clouds; that soon cleared after we were on our way again.  Never mind, we would have plenty more opportunities to see them again.

 

Ararat and little Ararat - initially shrouded in clouds
yet we would have plenty of opportunities to see them again (below)

 

Geghard means spear and the Geghard Monastery is where the spear used to open Christ's side, to confirm his death, was said to lie.  It was said to have been brought here by Jude the Apostle (Judas Thaddaeus) who died in 70 CE and a small cave-chapel was founded here around the fourth century.  The cave contains a sacred spring that is the probable reason for the site's association with the spear (the holy lance) because holy water mixed with Christ's blood came forth. 

The story of the holy lance only appears in John's Gospel, written well after the event (composed between 90 and 100 CE). Like much of John's Gospel this reimagining of the events does not appear in the earlier Synoptic Gospels (Mathew; Mark and Luke) so theologians attribute to it a metaphorical meaning.  Rejecting several earlier works about Jesus, the Synoptic Gospels, together with John's Gospel and the writings of St Paul, were collected under the Roman Emperor Constantine I to provide the metaphysical core to Christianity that distinguishes it from Judaism. 

 

Geghard Monastery - complete with a serendipitous angel - and the ancient holy spring

 

As it turned out I had plenty of time to contemplate such issues here because our bus wanted to stay a bit longer and so refused to start.  Then we had some more excitement when one of our party was taken away in an ambulance that announced on its side that it was provided by Chinese aid.  Suddenly China's President Xi Jinping's  'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR) initiative, also known as the 'New Silk Road', was manifest, outside the Geghard Monastery in Romania.

As many travellers have observed there are many many contradictory religions; almost all based on the, now well researched, human illusion that our mind operates independently of our body.

In our travels I constantly marvel that there is such a diversity of religious faiths.  Each has elaborate cultural practices and modes of expression designed to reassure their adherents that their particular route to eternal wellbeing for their disembodied 'spirit' is the correct one. In some this is a, somehow desirable, eternity (lasting billions of years?) in others it's another path, like rebirth in another body (then what?). All are believed in absolutely by their adherents, who are prepared to commit significant resources to their religious practice, of which this Monastery is an example.

It was, of course, the Roman Empire (later the Byzantine Empire) that popularised and spread this once obscure Jewish sect to become the world's greatest religion, with over two billion, collective, adherents to its multitude of sects, almost twice as many as Islam, followed by Hinduism and Buddhism. 

In the course of that growth, Monasteries, like this, and the many others we've visited, blossomed and sometimes struggled, across the face of the known world, capturing new hearts and minds. In this religion, Christianity, unless we turn to Jesus as our Saviour, our essence (soul) can be forever damned.  On the other hand if we accept and apply its tenets we can die safely:

'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ,' as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer asserts. 

Yet at Christian funerals I've been alarmed that 'sure and certain' - 'hope of the Resurrection' seems just a little bit equivocal. And I find eternal life to be a bit worrying - how long is 'eternal' - a few hundred years might not be too bad - but a few hundred billion?

But for Anglicans and many non-Roman Christians there's a catch, like the Zoroastrians before them, the Resurrection will not come until Judgement Day (or the end of days).  So Roman Christians who, around a thousand years ago (in the late 11th century) got tired of waiting for the Second Coming, began to assert that there's a heavenly waiting room, Purgatory, from which great aunt Sally can look down to see how the living are going and revering her memory; and/or to receive the benefit of their prayers - whatever they might achieve in her favour. 

Over time other Christian communities have added their own modifications too, so when visiting places of Christian worship like this it's sometimes difficult to determine which of these traditions is, or was, being practiced.

 

It's sometimes difficult to determine which flavour of Christianity is being practiced

 

As you might have divined, I find the seemingly endless spectrum of religious practice very interesting and one of my greatest incentives to travel.  Yet, if anything, it's made me less of a believer than when I started.

For me, the idea that our capacity to think and experience 'drifts away', independently, once our body is no longer functioning, requires an awe-inspiring suspension of disbelief or - as some would say - Faith.

Speaking of faith, eventually another bus arrived and 'lo and behold' we were off to visit another temple. This time to a god long forgotten. 

The society that built it considered a temple to be a sound investment of their scarce resources because this god, like all gods, had to be worshiped.  In most religions 'worship' is a means of seeking: benefits or preference; or avoiding harm; and often an attempt to secure the particular god's intersession or support when the time comes for the mind to depart the body - on its way to another, metaphysical place. 

Sometimes these ancient works need modern physics to date them. In this case a handy stone was found nearby with an inscription in Greek that says it was built as a temple to the Armenian sun god Mihr by Tiridates I - king of the Arshakuni.  The Arshakuni ruled the Kingdom of Armenia from 54 to 428 CE.  And the religion seemed to work for them because for nearly four centuries their Kingdom of Armenia thrived, extending across Northern Turkey, Syria and Albania.

After the conversion of Armenia to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator in 301, the Kingdom's days were numbered. But I doubt this demise had anything to do with abandoning, the now unrequited god, Mihr.  But he might reasonably have had a grievance, as he'd looked after them so well for nearly three centuries. It had more to do with Allah (Yahweh) and the Arabs.

Our local guide had an interesting claim about this too.  Apparently the Armenians taught the Greeks and Romans this style of building.  As this temple was built in 77 CE perhaps they'd also invented time travel.

 

Garni Temple - and the informative stone - written in Ancient Greek
It says this is a Temple to the Sun,
built in the 11th year of the reign of King Tiridates - 77 CE
There are more images in the Armenia Album See more...

 

After Christianisation this pretty little temple escaped the destruction metered out to other pagan places of worship and was used for various secular purposes, including the King's summer house.  Meanwhile a larger Christian church was built alongside.  At some point it was a guard post as there is some soldier inscribed graphiti, carved into one of the stone blocks.

Eventually both were in ruins but the temple has been of more interest to archaeologists and was restored, between 1969 and 1975, during the Soviet period, using the original stones as far as possible.  

Like many religious institutions it's in a spectacular location. The site contained the palace in Byzantine times and also features the ruins of a Roman Bath under a protective glasshouse.

 

The Christian ruins adjacent to the temple and the impressive setting - overlooking the Garni Gorge

 

 

Noah and his Ark

 

While returning to the bus we passed 'Noah's Garden', a restaurant featuring an interesting sign quoting Robert Gordon (Lord) Byron:  

'If the Scriptures are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed. – Armenia, which has paid as dearly as the descendants of Adam for that fleeting participation of its soil in the happiness of him who was created from its dust. It was in Armenia that the flood first abated, and the dove alighted.'

I was immediately interested. Elsewhere I've accused Byron of responsibility for the modern world. Read more...

Using my handy device I determined that Byron had been here twice: in 1876 and 1880; on the first occasion also climbing Ararat. But the quote mostly caught my attention because Byron was a religious agnostic and had no belief in the authority of the Scriptures.  As I soon discovered the quotation needs to be read in context.  It's part of a polemic, written for a largely Christian audience, drawing attention to the beginnings of the Armenian Genocide (see below) that was underway at the hands of the Turks.  Byron would later die while attempting to expel them from Greece. That's a whole other story.   

But it again drew the Biblical flood story to my attention.  Like the writings of Shakespeare much of the 'history' informing the authors of the Jewish Bible - the Old Testament - is drawn from earlier works (and religions). For solid evidence of this eclecticism visit the Jewish Museum in Jerusalem.  The Biblical 'flood' or 'deluge' myth is clearly 'elaborated' from the much older Epic of Gilgamesh, in turn inherited from earlier Mesopotamian legends and thus in part from the Zoroastrians and their 'end of days'. 

Modern scientists tell us of a series of global mass extinctions that changed all life on the planet - the last being 65 million years ago when an asteroid collided with the Earth. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of one much more recent, a ten thousandth of that time ago.

A global flood is a nice idea for a global extinction at the hands of a disappointed god but impractical. Those ancient mythologists had no way of knowing the relative heights of the tallest mountains or even that the Earth is an oblate spheroid (slightly flattened sphere) with relatively little (0.13%) water, by volume.  The may well have thought it was flat. Huge, devastating floods can and do occur quite often, including tsunami, but they are strictly local.

According to the Biblical version of this ancient myth, about five thousand years ago God was unhappy about how the world had turned out. He had capitulated control by allowing the devil's apple to free mankind to manage his own affairs. What a disaster! So he decided to scrub his canvas and start all over again:

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 

But looking around he found just one man who together with his family warranted saving.  So he sent a message to Noah telling him how to build an Ark that would survive the coming flood and would be big enough to carry enough animals to restock the planet for his future use:

And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.
And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. KJV

And so it came to pass. After the flood had had sufficient time to cleanse the Earth, Noah sent out a dove that eventually returned from Mt Ararat with a green olive twig, indicating that the deluge had subsided sufficiently to make landfall there.  Unfortunately one of the unicorns and the dragons didn't make it.

You might think I'm a little sceptical. Yet I'm not alone, except for some Christian, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists, the retelling of this myth is generally regarded as a parable; an implicit warning to sinners, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah; a mystical metaphor of some other kind that could mean anything; or a simple fairytale.

The authors obviously knew that Mount Ararat is very high and seems more so because it stands on a plane. So it was a good choice for the first landfall.  But they probably hadn't actually seen it, because at first glance it's obvious that there are no trees of any kind above the tree-line, let alone an olive tree. Ok, so perhaps the twig was flotsam - but what about carrying two  'of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind'.  How big was this thing?

Apart from the many other holes in this story, there is insufficient water on Earth to cover 'all the lands' to the top of Ararat at over 5,000 metres, nor has there ever been.  Water makes up less than 0.13% of the Earth's volume and while it could cover a perfectly smooth crust to a couple of kilometres, a principal element of the myth is a mountain, not to mention the other terrain.  Unbeknown to the ancients, who lacked the necessary skills and surveying instruments (or satellites) Mt Ararat is not as tall as nearby Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, that stands 5,642 metres above sea level. As the waters subsided it would have been evident to a large ship in the vicinity long before Ararat popped up. 

 

Mt Ararat - over 5,000 metres of sea level rise would be required to submerge it
Yet to cover 'all the land' would require water another four kilometres deep to cover Mt Everest - quite a lot of water
And the dove procured an olive twig from the top - have a look at it - an olive grove - really?

 

Anyway it's an interesting speculation. Where might extra water have come from?  In addition to the oceans and land based ice, now predominantly in Greenland and Antarctica, the crust contains a considerable amount of ancient groundwater (mineral water) yet even if all this water was forced out and added to the oceans, the average sea level rise would be around 52 metres (ref). This is somewhat short of the nine kilometres of sea level rise required to cover Mt Everest.

Nevertheless Ararat was once in Armenia and features on the Armenian coats-of-arms. It towers on the horizon in Yerevan as a kind of taunt. So the Noah myth is pretty strong, helped along by crazy fundamentalists trying to prove that it's true.

Some even assert that Ararat was indeed the tallest mountain in Noah's time because it's a semi-active volcano that last erupted in 1840, so in an earlier eruption the top four kilometres blew off.  Our bubbly local guide, who told jokes, laughed a lot and like the hero in Slumdog Millionaire, seemed to think was a guide's job was to tell gullible tourists tall tales as if they were true, mentioned this just before saying that her next mission was to take some tourists to the top of the northern mountains to experience the negative gravity that prevails there. 

 

 

Yerevan

 

Yerevan is the capital and the largest city in modern day Armenia.  It's not a huge city with a population just over one million people. 

Although one of the oldest cities in the world, with a foundation stone from 782 BCE, it seems modern thanks to the Soviet era cityscape with some fine buildings and a construction boom in the first decades of the 21st century that is still underway at a reduced rate.  For example our hotel is so new it's a building site in Google earth and older buildings across the street are under a complete rebuild.

The city is relatively low rise, due to earthquake risk, and spread out. At this time of year it was temperate and leafy - generally very pleasant.  In popular precincts like Abovyan Street and near the Cascades there are many European style cafés and restaurants to enjoy and there are several malls and affluent shopping streets. 

 

Around Yerevan - Outdoor dining; Charles Aznavour Square; Republic Square
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Needless to say there is also a Russian style Opera House that was surrounded by a park and adjoined by an outdoor food market and children's playgrounds. 

 

Yerevan Cascade

 

The Yerevan Cascade is another Soviet-era project that was only partially completed in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

It was conceived as a giant stairway linking the relatively flat area around the Opera House up a steep hill to a series of monuments on the heights above the city, offering unobstructed views of central Yerevan and Mount Ararat.

 

Yerevan Cascade - conceived as a giant stairway linking the city to a series of monuments on the heights
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The lower, completed part, is quite stunningly clad in white limestone.  

Inside the Cascade there are seven pairs of escalators that rise to landings within the complex, some of which connect to exhibit halls that are now elements in the Cafesjian Museum of Art.

 

The Cascade looks daunting from outside but seven pairs of escalators inside save a lot of climbing
 

Gerard Cafesjian was a, Brooklyn born, American-Armenian philanthropist and collector (1925-2013), who was gifted the unfinished complex as an art gallery, conditional upon its renovation. His Cafesjian Museum Foundation then invested over 35 million US dollars in stage one of the project that opened again to the public in 2009. He died before a planned top gallery was built.

Outside the flow of the Cascade is interrupted at intervals by fountain courts featuring modernist sculptures from the Cafesjian collection. 

 

Fountain courts interrupt the flow of steps - Ararat in the distance
 

Wikipedia tells us:

'The majority of the museum's collection are derived from the private collection of the founder Gerard L. Cafesjian. With more than 5,000 works, the centre exhibits one of the most comprehensive glass collections in the world, particularly the works of the Czech couple Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, whose collaborative work revolutionized the use of glass as an artistic medium. Other important glass artists in the collection include Dale Chihuly, Bohumil Elias, Pavel Hlava, Jaromír Rybák, Ivana Šrámková, Bertil Vallien, Lino Tagliapietra, Mark Peiser, and Hiroshi Yamano. The collection also has substantial holdings in drawing, painting and sculpture by many influential artists including Fernando Botero, Arshile Gorky, Jennifer Bartlett, Lynn Chadwick, Barry Flanagan, Jaume Plensa, and François-Xavier Lalanne'.

 

Part of the glass collection - reminds me of a Limerick:  There was a young man from Madras...

At the base of the Cascade is a garden sculpture court with works by contemporary sculptors including several by Botero.

 

Works by Botero and several other contemporary sculptors 

 

The top, unfinished, part remains a dilapidated building site.  Much of the exposed 1970's concrete is crumbling, exposing the steel reinforcing, and it looks anything but safe. We made our way up some very dodgy stairs and paths to admire the view. It was quite a steep climb.

 

At the top - the concrete is crumbling - and this is an earthquake area

 

After our exertions we had earned a coffee at one of the up-market restaurants that line the street adjacent to the lower sculpture gardens.
 

 

 

 

Vagharshapat

 

Around 18 kilometres west of Yerevan, is the satellite city (suburb) of Vagharshapat.  Our tour promised us two cathedrals.

Both were interesting, for entirely different reasons.

 

Zvartnots Cathedral    

This ancient Christian cathedral, now mostly in ruins, has been sufficiently restored to become an icon of the region.  The approach from the highway puts Ararat directly behind it. 

 

The ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral seen looking South and North
and those of Roman Baths (Byzantine) behind
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According to Wikipedia:

Zvartnots was built at a time when much of Armenia had just recently been overrun by the Muslim Arabs who were progressively occupying the Sasanian Persia/Iran of which Armenia was a part at the time. Construction of the cathedral began in 643 under the guidance of Catholicos Nerses III (nicknamed Shinogh or the Builder). Dedicated to St. Gregory, it was located at the place where a meeting between King Trdat III and Gregory the Illuminator was supposed to have taken place.
Following the Arab occupation of Dvin and the intensifying wars between the Byzantine and Arab armies on the former's eastern borders, Nerses transferred the patriarchal palace of the Catholicos from Dvin to Zvartnots.
The exterior church design, featuring basket capitals with Ionic volute mounts, eagle capitals, and vine scroll friezes reveals the influence of Syrian and northern Mesopotamian architecture.
Zvartnots remained standing until the end of the tenth century, but historical sources are silent as to the cause of its collapse.
The ruins of Zvartnots remained buried until its remains were uncovered at the start of the twentieth century. The site was excavated between 1901 and 1907 under the direction of vardapet Khachik Dadyan, uncovering the foundations of the cathedral as well as the remains of the Catholicos palace and a winery. The excavations furthermore revealed that Zvartnots stood on the remnants of structures that dated back to reign of the Urartian king Rusa II.

 

Close by there is the more modern Etchmiadzin Cathedral, that was unfortunately closed for renovation, but bearded men in ecclesiastical garb roam about the extensive precinct. Some of the group gravitated to the gift shop.

 

The Etchmiadzin Cathedral precinct - bearded men in ecclesiastical garb - and Ararat again
 

 

The Armenian Genocide Museum

 

The Armenian Genocide Museum is about three kilometres north-west of the city on an historic hill where there was once an iron-age fort. 

It was built in Soviet times in response to a demand from Armenians in 1965 when one hundred thousand people demonstrated in Yerevan for 24 hours to remember the 50th anniversary of the 1915 Genocide, perpetrated by the Ottomans (Turkey) and to insist that it be officially recognised by the Soviet Union. 

In response this memorial was designed and completed in November 1967.  In addition to the subterranean museum there is a 44-meter stele symbolising the national rebirth of Armenians. Twelve slabs are positioned in a circle, representing the twelve lost provinces in present-day Turkey. In the centre of the circle, at a depth of 1.5 meters, there is an eternal flame dedicated to the 1.5 million people killed during the Armenian Genocide.

Approaching the museum from the car park there are groves of trees and long line of individual trees planted by numerous world leaders in remembrance. It's very touching. The museum itself is harrowing. It's mostly photographic and pictures of dead and mutilated bodies abound. 

Although the events of 1915 are central to its construction the story of the oppression of the Armenian people is a lot older.  As I've already noted (above) Lord Byron was already appalled by this and trying to help in 1876. 

The trouble goes back even further to an agreement between the Persians and the Ottomans to cede Western Armenia to Turkey. Christians in Western Armenia were allowed a level of self-management but the province was impoverished.  This resulted an Armenian diaspora, when Christian Armenians migrated to other places in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere, particularly to Istanbul. 

Yet as a migrant minority they became increasingly despised as infidels and were denied civil rights; often forced into slavery; or their girls stolen and forced to convert to be taken and tattooed as Islamic wives or servants.

With Russia's victory in the Russian Turkish war in 1878 the Armenian Question, that Byron had raised, began to concern the Christian Powers of Europe, who together demanded reform in Turkey. 

In response Sultan Abdul Hamid II decided than rather than grant Armenians full civil rights it was easier to eliminate them. Groups of Turkish irregulars were assembled and granted the right to deal with the Armenians 'as they wished'.  The resulting unpunished massacres continued from 1894 to 1896.

But the real trouble began under the Young Turks, who decided that 'the salvation of the Turkish Homeland' required the elimination from Turkey of all non-Muslim elements, Christians and Jews alike and towns, including those in Turkish Western Armenia, with a non-Muslim majority were put to the sword. One and a half million were slaughtered. Turkey persists in denying these events, so one function of the museum is, as Auschwitz is for that more famous genocide, to provide documentary evidence of the atrocities to the world.

This is a long and complex history so I refer you to Wikipedia. Read more...

 

Sultan Abdul Hamid II dripping with blood.  The massacres of 1894 - 1896 were followed by the mass slaughter of 1915

 

The two attempted genocides are not unrelated.  That student of history, Adolph Hitler, would later use the Armenian Massacre to reassure his troops that what they were about to do would later be admired. In a speech to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on 22 August 1939, a week before they invaded Poland he would declare:

Unsere Stärke ist unsere Schnelligkeit und unsere Brutalität. Dschingis Khan hat Millionen Frauen und Kinder in den Tod gejagt, bewußt und fröhlichen Herzens. Die Geschichte sieht in ihm nur den großen Staatengründer. Was die schwache westeuropäische Zivilisation über mich behauptet, ist gleichgültig. Ich habe den Befehl gegeben – und ich lasse jeden füsilieren, der auch nur ein Wort der Kritik äußert – daß das Kriegsziel nicht im Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der physischen Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen nur im Osten, meine Totenkopfverbände bereitgestellt mit dem Befehl, unbarmherzig und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind polnischer Abstammung und Sprache in den Tod zu schicken. Nur so gewinnen wir den Lebensraum, den wir brauchen. Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

 

 

The National Gallery of Armenia

 

The National Gallery of Armenia was close to our hotel, on Republic Square.  It's the largest art museum in Armenia.

In addition to the world's largest collection of Armenian art it has an impressive collection of Russian and Western European art. 

Founded in 1921 under the decree of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic it gained a core of works from Moscow.  In addition to the Armenian State collection and has works from artists of the Armenian diaspora working in Paris, New York, Rome and Beirut. 

The Russian collection is particularly strong, including works by Kandinsky and Chagall. But there are some important pieces of Western European art including the old masters: Donatello, Tintoretto and Canova. I spent several happy hours there.

 

The National Gallery of Armenia, Republic Square
A pleasant way to spend some time wandering about
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In the same building is the History Museum of Armenia, requiring an extra visit, before we left this delightful city for the long flight home.